


Dragon of Chaos

by semperfiona



Category: Chronicles of Amber - Roger Zelazny, Harry Potter - J. K. Rowling
Genre: Ambiguously dark, Child Murder, Crossover, Gen
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2013-04-02
Updated: 2014-01-21
Packaged: 2017-12-07 07:51:13
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 4
Words: 3,253
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/746084
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/semperfiona/pseuds/semperfiona
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>"I eat jumped up sorcerers like Voldemort for breakfast."</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Initiation

**Author's Note:**

> This is somewhat inspired by tryslora's fondness for Dara.
> 
> There will be additional chapters, but I don't promise any particular posting schedule, and I don't yet know where this is going.

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> "I eat jumped up sorcerers like Voldemort for breakfast."

Thirst. Crusty sore eyes. Wiping them you find your hands are gritty with sand. Struggle to stand, limp a few steps and fall again to hands and knees. Thirst. It seems it might never end. Reach for your wand; find it absent. " _Aguamenti_ ", you mutter anyway. Nothing happens. Repeat it again and again until you’re screaming your dry throat raw. No water fills your hands. 

Oasis. There must be an oasis. Decide it, looking down at the sand you are nearly lying in. Close your eyes and insist on it. There is an oasis and I WILL get to it. Force yourself to stand and walk. No desert is going to kill a Malfoy, and if it does you will NOT die on your knees. You won’t give it the satisfaction. 

And ten steps later there it is. A clear blue pool surrounded by lush trees and shrubs. You wade right into it, robes and all, and plunge your face into the water, drinking deeply. 

Eventually you begin to wonder why there are no animals here, and immediately you hear a thundering of hooves. Maybe they’re not thirsty. Maybe they’re running from a lion...and a roar follows on the thought. Several roars. A whole pride of hunting lions. Lions make you think of Gryffindors, and like you conjured it a griffin flies overhead cawing raucously.

_What is this place? How did I get here? Is it a place at all, or am I trapped in my mind by some curse?_

You decide that whatever it is, it’s obviously responding to your desires, and decide firmly that you’ll be safe. The predators are busy with their natural prey, and have no interest in one slightly-battered wandless wizard. 

Time to think, then, and remember. 

~~~

Tile. Blood. Pain. Someone else's horrified screaming. And then black, empty, nothing.

An unknowable time later, you awoke in a soft bed with a girl your age looking down at you. Slim, freckled, short brown hair and green eyes, wearing a brown shirt and trousers rather than robes but somehow she doesn't look Muggle. She didn't quite look sixteen, either; those eyes were too knowing, too deep. 

"Who are you?"

She turned it around. "My name is Dara. But the real question is, who are you?" 

You scoffed. "I am Draco Malfoy, son of Lucius, son of Abraxas. My father sits at the right hand of the Dark Lord."

She scoffed right back. "I eat jumped up sorcerers like your Voldemort for breakfast. Try again."

 _Oh, shite and bugger. I've been captured by the other side, and they're idiots. Naming that name, arrogant little..._ "Potter, you're an idiot. He can hear you."

"I said, I eat jumped up sorcerers for breakfast, and my name is still Dara. I will tell *you* who you are. You're Narcissa Black's son, true enough, but your father is my stepson. You can call me Grandmother if you must, but I'd really rather you didn't. Makes me feel old." She offered you a hand to help you out of bed, but you ignored it and stood up. Somehow it made you feel better that you were taller than she was. 

"I don't believe a word of it." You looked around the room trying to find your wand. It was quietly lying on the table beside the bed, and you snatched it up. " _Incarcerous!_ "

She smiled, and the conjured ropes fell away into flames that went out instantly. "I should tell you, as of right now, that I've decided your magic will no longer work here. I need you to listen to me." It was like a gray cloud just smothered something in your mind...no, that's not right. The cloud was outside you, somehow, but it cut you off all the same.

You stepped to the window, which looked out over ...a whirling disorienting mass of color and shine. The walls of the room you are in were just visible to the left and right, but there was nothing that looks like land. "Where AM I?" You were almost shrieking, you realize now.

She smiled again. "You're in the Ways of Sawall in the Courts of Chaos. You're a long way from home...or more accurately, you've finally come home." You fainted.

When you woke again, you were back in the bed and there were two voices talking. You pretended you were still unconscious.

"Doesn't believe me, poor child." This was the same voice from before. Dara, you remind yourself.

"The Logrus will fix that right up." A male voice, cold and mocking.

"No excess of fatherly feeling, I see, Mandor." 

"No point to it, if he can't survive the initiation."

Squinting carefully, you saw that the second voice belonged to a tall thin man dressed all in black and with yes, white-blond hair and aristocratic features. You squeezed your eyes closed again and wished you were back in the bathroom bleeding to death. It was too much, all too much.

The next thing you can remember, you were standing at a tunnel mouth and the thin man pushed you through it. There was darkness, there was terror, there was cold, there was anger, there was endless sand and heat.

~~~

_This is the Logrus, then, whatever that is._

An answering presence somehow communicates a 'yes' without any words either aloud or in your mind.

_What do I do?_

Resignation, knowledge, peace, all flow into you, and suddenly you laugh out loud. Power. It's all you ever wanted, and now it is yours. Yes, you could eat Voldemort for breakfast. Or Potter, if that's your preference. No mere shadow sorcerer can stand against the unleashed true forces of Chaos.


	2. Confrontation

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> "The day may come when you defeat me, but today is not that day."

_I want out_ , I thought, and there was a henge surrounding my oasis. Sunlight streamed through between the stones, and I suddenly noticed that my desert was dark. Night had fallen around me while I drank in and exulted in the power surrounding me.

I walked to the nearest portal and stepped through it. A man stood in the clearing, leaning against a tree. I knew him; I remembered his voice mocking me in my semiconscious state. I didn’t think, I just reached for that new power and flung it at him.

He shook his head, laughed, and tossed a metal ball at me. I reached to catch it, Seeker reflexes acting without thought, but it fell to the ground without fulfilling its trajectory and began circling the spot where I stood.

It felt like my air had been cut off, although I was breathing. He’d somehow disrupted that vital new connection to power. I could not move.

“Hello, Draco,” he said. “My name is Mandor, and I am your father.”

“Forgive me if I do not show an excess of filial feeling,” I spat.

“Heard that, did you? And just what would Lucius Malfoy have done with a Squib child, if I may ask?”

“You mayn’t,” I hissed. Another metal ball joined the first, and I was elsewhere.

~~~

Three years old, you hold tightly to your mother. Pale she is, and tired, and weeping. Your father is holding a screaming baby by its ankles out an open window. You stare, biting the thumb in your mouth to keep from making any sound. Already you know that you must watch in silence.

He lets go. The wailing stops abruptly and there is nothing but silent weeping to be heard in the room. Your mother’s lip is bleeding; she has bitten through it. 

~~~

Legilimency. But not of any kind I’d met before, and my shields were useless.

I stood silently, angrily, and squeezed my eyes closed against the prickles of waiting tears. I would not give him the satisfaction. Finally, I grated, “Point taken.”

He went on as if nothing had happened. “You’ve gained knowledge of the what. What you are. What you can do. But you do not yet know the how or even all of the who. That is what you must learn, while you decide what you want from the rest of your life.”

“And I’m to learn it from you?” I asked, striving to hide the curiosity that was welling up against my will.

“I am an experienced teacher, and quite accomplished. The day may come when you defeat me, but today is not that day." He gestured, and a table and four chairs appeared set for a formal dinner. The table was covered in white damask, the wineglasses were Waterford, the china was...I had eaten every dinner of my life off that china, and I knew it. It was pure white, edged with silver, and imprinted with the Malfoy crest. Cold seized me by the arms.

"Are you hungry?"

I was still bound. I could not move. Speech had deserted me as well.

“You don't trust me. An instinct that will serve you well in Chaos, over the many many years you may hope to live. Never trust anyone. But if I meant to kill you, you would already be dead. I've had any number of opportunities already, starting with leaving you to die where you were." He shrugged. "Such intentions may change with time. However, I am justly lauded for my culinary spells, and I will never poison anyone at a dinner I have catered. That much will not change." 

"One of his little foibles," put in Dara, strolling out of a rainbow-colored shimmer in the air. Mandor slid a card into his breast pocket and drew out another.

Recovered, I finally demanded, "How did you get that china!" 

"Summoned it," he said absently, turning his attention to the card in his hand as the cold in my arms reached the bones. Moments later, he reached out a hand and a sturdy dark-haired man appeared clasping it. 

"Draco, meet my stepbrother Merlin, King of Chaos."

"Your majesty," I said, bowing.

"Cut the crap, this isn't court," he said. He turned to Mandor. "Family dinner, flag of truce and all that jazz, yeah?" 

"Just dinner, no strings."

Merlin snorted. "Our last no-strings family dinner you finagled me into this job."

I was startled into another comment. "You're _American_?" Somehow this was the most outlandish thing yet. 

"From the center of the universe," he replied. "San Francisco." A chuckle, a pause. "And Chaos. And Amber."

Information flooded into my conscious mind: Serpent, Unicorn, Logrus, Pattern, eons-long contention, treachery and wars and rapprochement. I shook my head—it was too much—and the flood subsided, but I knew I could call on it later.

Clearly I needed the information and training these people could provide. What would happen afterward remained to be seen. "Dinner and a truce, then," I finally said to Mandor, and he released the bindings on me.


	3. In the Cards

I refuse to feel guilty for not describing the food, whether it hurts Mandor’s pride or not. It’s not like he’s reading this. It was food. I was hungry. It was, in fact, excellent food, but I was not interested in that. There was little conversation during the meal. Whenever I wanted to say something, somehow between forming the thought and the words reaching my mouth I found myself reaching for the fork instead. 

Finally the dessert was served and eaten, and the dishes banished presumably back to the cupboards at Malfoy Manor, and I could speak again. “You Imperiused me!”

“Nonsense,” Mandor said. “Not even a minor compelling.”

I waited for more explanation but none was forthcoming. Instead, Merlin took out a sketchpad and pens and began drawing. He had turned the pad at an odd angle, so that I could see it, and in moments I recognized my own face. Remarking on this seemed superfluous, so I simply gave him a raised eyebrow.

He gave me back a minimal shrug and continued drawing. When the image was complete, he stared at it for a few moments and then I felt like someone was knocking on the walls of my mind. “Legilimency?” I closed my eyes to make sure no one had eye contact, but the questing sensation continued. “Without eye contact?”

“Communication,” Merlin said. “You can refuse it, by locking all the doors of your mind. Or you can accept, and speak to whomever has contacted you. Works over any distance, too.”

I don’t know why I decided to trust him. Maybe he’d amused me with his Americanisms, or because it really was a very fine drawing of me, or because I was no longer hungry and it really had been an excellent meal, or because we had all agreed to a truce. I opened a side door in my mind and then I saw him double. I shook my head a bit, and closed and reopened my eyes. The second Merlin persisted, translucent and shimmering over whatever else was in view.

“Interesting,” I said. 

“You can also travel to the location of the person you’re talking to, or to a known location.” He walked a few dozen yards away and reached a hand to me. I took it, and he pulled me to him. No squeezing, just stepping from here to somewhere else. 

We walked back to the table and sat back down. He took out a pack of cards and fanned them over the tablecloth. I recognized Mandor and Dara and Merlin himself; there were also many other people and a number of strange places. “These are Trumps; many of us can draw them, as you just saw.”

Another thing to learn. I was giving in. “Any known location, any known person?”  
“Yeah.”

This was too good to be true, and I was remembering the instructions to not trust anyone and regretting my impulsive trust earlier. “What are you not telling me? What did I just give you the opportunity to do to me?”

“Smart boy.” This from Dara, who had watched the whole proceedings with an air of detached amusement. I scowled at her.

Mandor answered the question. “A person can use the contact to make a mental attack. It works both ways, either the caller or the recipient of a contact can attempt an attack. We do rather consider it gauche, however, and one would be burning all one’s bridges to do so. No one would ever accept another call from that person.”

“So it is distance Legilimency, then.” The Dark Lord would love to have this. “Who can use it?”

“The cards and drawings use the power of the Logrus. Merlin, let him see the drawing more closely.” He passed it across and I looked at it intently. In the shading and lines I could see the writhing shapes of the Logrus. It started to feel icy and I felt a very odd twisting in my mind as if I was contacting myself. I closed my eyes tight and tossed the pad away. Merlin caught it. 

“Only Logrus initiates can use them, then?”

“Pattern users can draw Trumps based on its power, too,” Merlin said. “I can do either, but I learned Logrus first so it is quicker. And it’s difficult to draw on the Pattern this close to Chaos.”

“An understatement,” commented Dara.

So He wouldn’t be able to use it himself, but I could gain some power and status for myself. Even better. Or even... _jumped up sorceror... breakfast..._ echoed Dara’s voice in my thoughts.

“Teach me.”


	4. Connections

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Anger and resentment _are_ emotional connections.

Drawing lessons. It was like I’d been sent to Agatha Entwhistle’s Finishing School for Pureblood Witches. Line and shade, perspective and tedium. With extra bonus Logrus headache. By the time Merlin thought I’d grasped the process well enough to let me try it by myself, I had filled five sketchbooks with drawings of everything and everyone I knew in Chaos. Not many people, either. I was sick of drawing the same three people over and over and never getting the Trumps to activate. 

“But it looks just like him!” I tore the last likeness of Mandor from my sketchbook and crumpled it angrily, throwing it into the corner of the room where it vanished into the shadows. Dara on the page before, suffered the same fate, and Merlin himself the page before that. All perfect likenesses, all infused with the power of the Logrus so that the corners of the page writhed when I looked away, and all completely dead and useless.

Merlin sighed. “Maybe you don’t know us well enough. The physical likeness is not enough; you also need an intellectual or emotional connection and knowledge of the subject. Try drawing someone from home.”

Anger and resentment _are_ emotional connections, I thought bitterly, and turned to a blank page. 

_Clear the mind. Let it go. A field of new snow, quiet stars, no moon. Clear the mind. Let it go. A pool of deep water, surrounded by mossy stones. Clear the mind. Let it go. Reach for the presence under the water, under the snow._

The Logrus flared to life in my mind and my hand began to move.

_Mother is levitating toy blocks in front of the fireplace while you chase them. She is laughing from the edge of a clearing while you whoop with delight on your first broom. You are opening your Hogwarts letter and she is smiling._

I opened my eyes—I hadn’t realized they were closed—blinked away the betraying wetness at the corners, and looked down at a perfect likeness of my mother, sitting by the fire in the drawing room, her needlepoint basket by her side. I reached out for her, through the drawing, and the scene shifted. She was lying alone in her bedroom, weeping. “Mother,” I called, but she didn’t respond. She just kept crying, wiping her eyes with a crumpled handkerchief.

I squeezed my eyes closed and turned the page, breaking the connection. 

“It worked,” Merlin said. 

“She couldn’t hear me,” I scratched out. 

“She was distracted.”

“Crying. She thinks I’m dead, you arsehole!”

“It’s safer for both of you that way. You will see her again.”

“Get out. I’m done.”

He left, and I collapsed onto the bed.

The next morning, I was angrier than ever, and there was only ever one thought in my head when I was angry. I picked up the sketchbook again and began to draw. Scruffy clothes hanging off of bony shoulders. Stupid holey red trainers. Rats’ nest of dark hair. Round glasses and green eyes and the blasted famous scar. 

And before I even realized the drawing was finished, I heard him. “MALFOY?!?!”

I slammed my hand down on the page and broke the connection.

_Breathe. Breathe. Breathe. Slow and deep, over and over. You can use this. Yes._

I looked at the page again, and the connection reopened. “Hello Potter,” I said. “Miss me?”

He shuddered and backed into the corner of his fourposter, pulling red curtains around himself. “You...you…I killed you!” he said.

Oh yes, I can use this. “So you did,” I said matter-of-factly. “Excellent Saving the Wizarding World, that was. Kill a scared sixteen-year-old kid. I’m sure that will be great practice for offing You-Know-Who.” I grinned at him and he shied further away.

“I didn’t mean to! I didn’t know what it did!”

“Oh like that makes it better. I’ll just try an unknown Dark Curse on a fellow student for funsies!”

“I didn’t know it was Dark!” he protested.

I laughed at him, and decided this was a good place to leave that. Let’s see how he feels tomorrow. I waved my hand at my drawing and Hogwarts faded from my sight.


End file.
